


The Cost of Warnings

by Franzeska



Series: March Meta Matters [26]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23332519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska
Summary: collected tumblr meta on warnings
Series: March Meta Matters [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664836
Kudos: 9
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	1. Yes, it is that hard

**Author's Note:**

> Uploaded for day 26 of the March Meta Matters Challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: July 9, 2017.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/162808921264/fandomisnotyoursafespace-shidgephobe
> 
> This was part of a discussion caused by a mod leaving ao3tagoftheday in a huff because they refused to honor people's requests for a lengthy (very lengthy) list of tags.

Man… I want to claw my skin off if I’m forced to watch sitcoms (and yes, this can be a RL issue since I had a roommate who insisted on watching Friends marathons every single day in the small shared space in our apartment and I would have to leave), but warning for secondhand embarrassment on fic? As a general rule? Come on!

That list is in serious Poe’s Law territory. Was every one of those serious? Were some trolls seeing if they could get nonsense on the list? Who knows!

I get that people want to keep everyone safe, but the endless rounds of “It’s not that hard to be nice! Why wouldn’t you care about others???” bug me. 

_Yes. It_ is _that hard._

At a certain point, there are only so many hours in the day. Adding this massive burden onto posting anything in public does have a perceptible chilling effect. Kink memes have withered and died over it before. The more anxious and insecure the fan, the bigger the chilling effect and the worse the intrusive thoughts about accidentally under-warning.

There’s a place for exhaustive tagging–in the bookmarks of really anal reccers for example–but it can’t be the expectation for everybody all the damn time. It’s something you choose for yourself if it suits you. There’s a reason we designed the basic AO3 warnings to be so simple but allowed every wacky optional tag imaginable.


	2. Why adding "secondary" warnings to AO3 isn't a great plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: May 9-11, 2018.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/173777941104/ao3-is-open-source  
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/173812722654/ao3-is-open-source
> 
> This was part of a callout shinelikethunder posted, urging antis and purity wankers to found their own space that they can control instead of futilely hoping AO3 will be that space. Astolat pointed out that one can do a collection on AO3 for recs of safe fics already. My first response was to that.

This is true. I feel like we’re severely underutilizing the potential of AO3 for organized, bookmark-based recs and categorizing.

> [oceanshimmerspirit-blog](https://oceanshimmerspirit-blog.tumblr.com/post/173785723328/ao3-is-open-source):
> 
> [@ao3org](https://tmblr.co/mhS02708F8s7tFAbzQOq32Q) Although AO3 does have a bunch of warning tags which really cover the basics already. Could we perhaps have a secondary list of warning tags? That people could ask to have warning tags added to? [...]

I can’t read your ‘keep reading’, sadly. (When you’re only viewable from the dash, your readmores don’t work. Thanks, Tumblr!)

Looking at the stuff before the cut, I don’t think that’s what was being proposed. There aren’t only two groups of people, and the people asking for more warnings aren’t necessarily talking about their own triggers. Bookmarks are a great way for lots of individual people to rec things however they want. Once you find a reccer you trust, you use them to find content.

I don’t see secondary warnings going well. The posting interface is already lengthy and complicated to the point of turning a lot of people off. The primary archive warnings were chosen for being far and away more common than any others, being less ambiguous, and being something that an Abuse staff could reasonably try to enforce. AO3 already has an excellent, flexible, customizable way of adding as many secondary/tertiary warnings as one wants: the freeform tags.

This is such an individual taste thing that I really think it does come down to individual reccers building their own styles and gaining a following.

There have been BNF reccers in the past. There have been small circles of reccers who agreed on standards. I’m inviting people to make that happen again.

> [...]
> 
> So I was primarily working off the impression that the people asking for more tags are generally people who have triggers or think things like torture, abuse etc. shouldn’t be written about. You’re giving me the impression people want to be more picky then that? If so yeah… I can totally see how secondary warning tags wouldn’t work if things got to detailed in all the warning tags.
> 
> [...]

I think you have some potentially interesting ideas there. The trouble for me is that many of the requests I see for more tagging, especially for concepts like “abuse”, turn out to hinge on some very specific ideas of what counts as such–ideas I disagree with.

Take gaslighting for example: There’s the traditional definition where an abuser isolates the victim and makes them doubt reality. Then there’s the tumblr definition, which often involves a character disagreeing or asserting that the other person’s reaction is stupid, but without the key elements of isolation and power over the victim. (Though, to be fair, I only occasionally see this “definition” applied to fic. It comes up more often when people try to argue with antis by using facts instead of feelings, and the antis fling buzzwords back.)

“Abuse” on tumblr often means someone’s NOTP, any hero/villain ship, the wrong man topping in m/m, or any ship with an age difference. Personally, I’m not going to tag age difference as much of anything unless it’s being kinked on in the fic. Even then, I want to tag it as a value-neutral tag, not a “warning”. (I’d be tagging it as a kink or trope, not a red flag for danger.) I fundamentally disagree with many tumblr-standard judgments about what counts as abuse. (Cf. all discourse about _Call Me By Your Name_.)

I see plenty of requests to tag for strong language. I’m not 12, so I’m not tagging for swearing. I also see plenty of requests to tag for drug or alcohol use. I’ll tag for those if they’re a major feature of the story, but I’m never going to be okay tagging for what I see as normal levels of recreational use. If a couple shares a bottle of wine over dinner and then fucks, that’s happy, vanilla, 100% consensual fluff to me. I’m no more likely to tag for the wine they had than the steak or salad. The only tags it needs are the pairing and the rating. I am morally opposed to putting on tags like “drunk sex” because they problematize something that is normal and unremarkable. But there are plenty of people on tumblr who want to see exactly those tags because sex plus any level of intoxication feels skeevy to them and like there’s a potential consent issue. That reaction comes from an understandable place, but I’m still going to prioritize my own understanding of reality over the hypothetical reaction of a stranger.

To answer your question, yes, a lot of these warnings discussions are about what hypothetical “vulnerable fans” or “children” need in a warnings system, not just about what the poster needs tagged to avoid PTSD triggers. There’s also a lot of conflation of the words ‘children’, ‘teens’, and ‘minors’, and all of them get used to talk about 22-year-olds. It’s not everybody, but it’s enough to make me suspicious of this topic. There’s also the fact that if it comes down to a choice between “protecting” underage fans by sanitizing adult space or kicking out underage fans, I’ll happily kick them out for their own protection. A lot of people on tumblr would make the opposite choice, even if we’re talking about all of Tumblr or all of AO3 or even all of the internet. That stance disgusts and angers me.

Sometimes, warnings stuff gets framed as people who don’t care or haven’t thought about safety vs. people who need protection, but it’s equally likely to be people who see something as abnormal and want it tagged vs. people who are ethically opposed to that tag and have been thinking about it since the 1990s. (Raising my awareness isn’t going to make me tag CMBYN fic with tags I find homophobic, puritanical, and delusional, you know?) There’s really no way to reconcile all of these things in the same top-level warnings system.

AO3 is designed to work for a lot of people most of the time and to protect the fic that is most likely to get kicked off of other sites: kinky porn, underage stuff, queer stuff, RPF, etc. (This isn’t a hypothetical: these tumblr discussions are full of people who built it. Astolat, for example.) It’s a very broad approach designed for a massive archive of all fandoms. Wanting a more tailored experience makes sense but requires something with a narrower focus, like a single collection or a smaller archive.

The advantage of the bookmarking idea is that any fan can do their own version of it without relying on anyone else or needing to get input and agreement from a committee. It’s something anyone can start right now, not wait a long time for AO3 to implement. And it’s infinitely customizable: whomever wants to make bookmarks can decide on their own standards and not worry about AO3 forgetting something or prioritizing the wrong set of secondary warnings.


	3. Guilt-free orgasms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: September 6, 2018.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/177824399869/thanks-anon-for-sharing-your-thoughts-they-are
> 
> This was in response to an anon ask someone else got on how we should think more critically about the themes we eroticize in fic. Elfwreck responded with: “Why we write slash” is not a new exotic essay topic.

Yeah. And, honestly, we often _have_ imported those discussions to tumblr. The difference is that when you read a kinky fic on AO3, it’s not usually sitting right next to the author’s tl;dr about why they like that particular kink and what it means. Even if they’ve posted meta about that, and recently, it’s probably lost under a tidal wave of cat gif reblogs on tumblr.

On LJ, if you were reading fic as it was posted to someone’s personal journal, that context might have been _right there_. You might have been scrolling past it to find the fic.

Personally, I much prefer the older/newer way of doing things where a lot of the discussion is on the mailing list/tumblr and the fic is on an archive, but it does break that LJ link between consuming fic and knowing something about the author of that fic.

I do sometimes have a fair bit of “critical reflection” in fic notes–or at least some tl;dr about what research I did or what the inspiration was. The issue I have is that a lot of the fics that people most want to have “critical reflection” are basically about rape fantasies. When I write fic like that (and I’ve written plenty), a note like “You know this is bad in real life, right?” or “Here’s what I think about consent” destroys the entire purpose of the fic: 

_Guilt-free orgasms_.

It’s a bucket of cold water to the face when the reader just wants to get off, and even if you’re not literally reading one-handed, it’s a major buzzkill that ruins the emotions you’re supposed to be getting from the fic. It’s the kink equivalent of one of those homophobic “WARNING: BOYKISSING” bullshit labels you used to see all over the internet. It’s saying that I think that rape fantasies are weird and bad and that my audience is too clueless to know anything about them… instead of them being one of the most common fantasies on the planet.

There are certainly readers who are new to the idea who would be helped by more extensive notes that outline my stance on various kinks and explain what I meant for one to get out of my fic. But I find that my own reading experience is generally diminished by that kind of note. It carries this nasty whiff of kinkshaming and insecurity. The target audience of my fics is people like me, and those people are better off without such a note.

There are types of notes that a lot of tumblr would like to see on dubcon/noncon/fluffy sex pollen/drunk sex fics that I find morally objectionable in the same way that I find it homophobic to “warn” for gay stuff. (Label, sure. Warn, no.) Sometimes, I genuinely don’t agree with parts of fandom (consensual drunk sex between people who drink regularly and know their alcohol tolerance is _consensual sex that needs no further labels about consent!_ ) Sometimes, I agree that something would be very bad IRL, but the fact that it’s operating on porn logic and requires the assistance of an eldritch horror with aphrodisiac personal secretions makes me feel that RL is not terribly relevant. Sometimes, I want the ambivalent, nuanced take on consent in the actual fic to speak for itself. I don’t find an author’s note to be a helpful way of fixing either my own weakness as a writer or an audience’s lack of reading comprehension. If the nuances didn’t come across, maybe I’ll write my next fic a little differently, or maybe I simply need more practice at writing, and only time and effort will solve the problem.

The original ask is about teenage characters having sex in fic. To be honest, fictional teenagers didn’t interest me when I _was_ a teenager, and they don’t interest me much now, but I still wouldn’t slap a whole lot of labels and notes on such a thing. I was sexually active as a teenager. That was normal for me and the teens around me. I would never pathologize that in an author’s note!

Aside from stuff like dubcon and the mere fact of someone under 18 getting frisky, the other thing fandom is obsessed with labeling these days is “abusive” relationships. Most of these don’t need an author’s note because the “abusiveness” consists of the fact that it’s a villain/hero pairing or that there’s an age gap. I philosophically disagree with the idea that these are _inherently_ abusive, which I’m happy to discuss, but not in an author’s note!

Or maybe the fic actually does contain abusive behavior, but again, this is one of those things where a lot comes down to the author’s skill. When I’ve had toxic relationships in real life, the problems have been complex and both of us have been at fault. I don’t write fic about domestic violence that has one perpetrator and one victim. I might write a fic where two people are bad for each other, but I am certainly not going to undercut whatever subtlety I managed to put into the writing by slapping a big “This is bad!” note on the end. That invites the audience to take my aesop summary as the entire point instead of thinking about the story for themselves.

To be perfectly honest, a lot of what tumblr thinks is “healthy”, I think is toxically codependent and deeply implausible. A lot of what tumblr thinks is “abusive”, I think is “Your friends set some boundaries because you’re an emotional vampire whose untreated mental illness is destroying everything around you!” No author’s note is going to help bridge those gaps in perception, and where the fic relationship is wish fulfillment that is intentionally unrealistic, an author’s note about what works in real life can come across as kinkshaming. It won’t convince any of the people who need convincing, but it _will_ make the fic less fun for the people who would have enjoyed it.

Teens do have poor boundaries in many cases. The most obvious form that takes is thinking that the world revolves around them and that everything should cater to them. Learning to take what you read with a grain of salt is part of growing up. Learning to suss out an author’s biases and cultural context without being explicitly told is part of that. Occasionally, sure, an author’s note might help. Most of the time, it’s just something a person has to figure out for themselves.

I’m 100% with OP on promoting critical thinking. I’m just suspicious that they mean something very different from what I do.


	4. Sometimes, asking for more labeling is asking them not to post at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: January 31, 2020.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/190574876949/the-cost-of-warnings

I see the “CNTW is evil” debate is going around again. I agree with the usual pro-CNTW arguments, like those laid out by [@road-rhythm](https://tmblr.co/mucg19TO-kl1VjZw5w_zrtw) [here](https://road-rhythm.tumblr.com/post/190550800968/here-be-dragons-the-creator-chose-not-to-warn).

My big picture summary is that we wrote the AO3 rules to be pretty good for a lot of people. We did not write them to be perfect for _anyone_ , much less _everyone_.

Like that other post mentions, compromise is both desirable and inevitable.

There are a few points that I feel routinely get left out by people who hate CNTW. The big ones are these:

**1\. Warning as Genre**

First, warnings don’t just tell you what’s in the story. They imply quite a lot about _how_ that thing is. ‘Noncon’ tends to imply a standard rape recovery fic where the bottom is traumatized. It doesn’t literally mean that and it doesn’t have to mean that, but this is what it generally _does_ mean in fandom.

I write fluffy fics, making the warning tonally dissonant. I also tend to write fics where the “aggressor” is the one who is traumatized.

I tag fics with whatever more specific tags I think are relevant like ‘Consensual Snuff’ + ‘Under-negotiated Kink’ on [a Deadpool fic where _Deadpool_ is totally fine with what’s going on, but _Cable_ is freaking the fuck out](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F14851908%2Fchapters%2F34381419&t=Yzk5ZGZmYjE1ZTkwNGRjMDQ0OGM1NDcxMTRiMWViNmEyYWM0YTA5OCxjdWNIcE5BRA%3D%3D&b=t%3AF7RptIYdAO86KVsNGkj6aw&p=https%3A%2F%2Folderthannetfic.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F190574876949%2Fthe-cost-of-warnings&m=1). Frankly, I _do_ think there’s a bunch of noncon in that fic, but it’s all the top getting mindfucked and the bottom not understanding boundaries.

In fact, the majority of my CNTW fics are that:

[Jeeves freaks out about his badwrong sadistic tendencies](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F21840673&t=NzFkN2I1NzU2ODlhZmExOTE2ZjU0ZTU5ZDAzYjNkNzMxZThlYTg3OCxjdWNIcE5BRA%3D%3D&b=t%3AF7RptIYdAO86KVsNGkj6aw&p=https%3A%2F%2Folderthannetfic.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F190574876949%2Fthe-cost-of-warnings&m=1). Bertie is cheerfully enthusiastic. Bad guys made them do it.

[Crowley goes all feral on Aziraphale](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F19865869%2Fchapters%2F47046820&t=YTNiY2NhODgwNDg3MjhlZGQ2NWY5Y2QyZWYzMWIyNTY3NzE1MzcxZCxjdWNIcE5BRA%3D%3D&b=t%3AF7RptIYdAO86KVsNGkj6aw&p=https%3A%2F%2Folderthannetfic.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F190574876949%2Fthe-cost-of-warnings&m=1). Only afterwards, while Crowley is freaking out, is it revealed that he was set up to hurt him by the villains. Pity for them Aziraphale is too kinky to torture.

[Connor mindfucks Gavin Reed into topping.](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F18073136&t=ODZhNWRmOTgwOGFlMWQ4MGNmNDIzYzIxNjAzZjMwYzk4NGM0Y2RiNSxjdWNIcE5BRA%3D%3D&b=t%3AF7RptIYdAO86KVsNGkj6aw&p=https%3A%2F%2Folderthannetfic.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F190574876949%2Fthe-cost-of-warnings&m=1)

[Hooker steals a drugged drink to save Gondorff](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F17036582&t=ZDcxZTA3NjkzOGJiMDhmY2QxYmFhNDkyNDE5ZDg0YTdjYzMyN2NkZixjdWNIcE5BRA%3D%3D&b=t%3AF7RptIYdAO86KVsNGkj6aw&p=https%3A%2F%2Folderthannetfic.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F190574876949%2Fthe-cost-of-warnings&m=1), then finds himself hired as a… well… hooker, while too doped to stand on his own. Not that he’s complaining.

[Alejandro arrives in search of violent revenge](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F15220340%2Fchapters%2F35301422&t=NmVkZmRlZTcyNDYxMzhhMjU0MjE0MzI3MjU0ZTEzOTlkZjY5ZDRkZixjdWNIcE5BRA%3D%3D&b=t%3AF7RptIYdAO86KVsNGkj6aw&p=https%3A%2F%2Folderthannetfic.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F190574876949%2Fthe-cost-of-warnings&m=1). This is straight up Too Kinky To Torture fic.

[Illya’s been drugged and is feeling violent](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F4636992&t=OWMxMjgxOTA5NzI4Y2Y2YmFhOTM0ZjZiYzY2MWEzNGE5ZjM5MDZkOSxjdWNIcE5BRA%3D%3D&b=t%3AF7RptIYdAO86KVsNGkj6aw&p=https%3A%2F%2Folderthannetfic.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F190574876949%2Fthe-cost-of-warnings&m=1). Napoleon doesn’t mind at all but doesn’t bother to say so. Illya misreads the situation.

[Comedic were-jaguar noncon bestiality](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F475384%2Fchapters%2F824599&t=OGIzMzE2MGM3YjY2MTMyM2YyYmYxZjQxN2FlMjc2N2NhMGY3MTgxNCxjdWNIcE5BRA%3D%3D&b=t%3AF7RptIYdAO86KVsNGkj6aw&p=https%3A%2F%2Folderthannetfic.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F190574876949%2Fthe-cost-of-warnings&m=1) where Jensen is like “Get him off me” and Aisha is like “Do you want me to shoot him? What am I supposed to do here?”

Et cetera.

**2\. The Purpose of Fic**

So why don’t I just give detailed warnings on the fics themselves then?

It’s simple: these fics have plots, and I want you to have emotions while reading them, but… they’re also _porn_.

_They are porn for you to masturbate to._

I find detailed author’s notes about the exact flavor of noncon or dubcon in a fic to be a gigantic lady-boner-killer. x100 if there’s any note of any kind like “This would be bad in real life”. PSAs are a mood-killer for me, both as a writer and as a reader. Not everyone is like this, but I am far from alone.

I’m certainly not going to clutter up my porn with things that _ruin the entire point of the fic_.

**3\. Different Media Types**

I also have a bunch of stuff labeled ‘CNTW’ that is vids or very old fic.

The reality of AO3 is that it contains more than just fic. For some other media types, I’m not always sure where the line on ‘graphic violence’ is. Or maybe I’m vidding a source that had noncon, but it’s not totally clear in the vid. Or maybe the source had no noncon, but I feel the vid might strike an unfamiliar viewer as though it did.

“Depicted on page” and “depicted on screen” are different. A text description of an overwhelmed, overstimulated character crying often won’t read as noncon where a drawing of the same thing will. “Graphic violence” in text has to be a lot more violent to count than “graphic violence” in live action footage.

CNTW can bridge that gap in expectations between different media types without forcing a warning one finds inappropriate onto an artwork.

**4\. Historical Preservation**

AO3 _also_ has a lot of older, imported work. I have some stories that are either kind of long or in fandoms I now dislike. I have stories I find embarrassing to reread. Some people have hundreds and hundreds of stories to import. AO3 imports whole archives. Even people who _prefer_ to give specific warnings sometimes just don’t have the _time_.

From a historical preservation perspective, it is crucial to be able to get works onto AO3 without needing to spend an age labeling them. CNTW is a convenient way to do that.

_If we had no CNTW, we would save fewer historical fics._

**5\. The Burden of Labeling**

This is the big one for me.

Labeling takes time and thought. You can rail forever about how important it is, but you won’t change that fact.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling blocked, I go write for a kink meme. I never write for ones with elaborate labeling requirements because the whole point is to let the nasty flow, posting as fast as possible.

If I have to stop to think about labels, it inhibits my creativity.

Yeah, you can hate that. Yeah, you can think that a hypothetical stranger’s triggers are more important. You won’t change the fact that:

 _I genuinely find it inhibiting_.

It’s not something I made up as a gotcha: it’s my actual experience as a writer. Just like we would save fewer historical fics if the burden of labeling were higher, we would have fewer off-the-cuff fics. I would also get around to posting fewer of my vids.

Often, I’ll post a kink meme fill or a vid with almost no labeling at first, just to get it up on AO3. Later, when I’m feeling more analytical, I’ll come back and fill out more complete information. (In fact, some of those CNTW vids I just scrolled through could probably use a more specific label… I guess now is that “later”…)

Fanworks are not a professional project. There isn’t an intern in charge of writing blurbs or adding metadata. It’s the main creative person doing their thing alone in the time they have.

Sometimes, asking for more labeling _is asking them not to post at all_.


End file.
